Florida: Epilogue

I hope you have enjoyed my Florida trip series.  It takes a long time to look through the pictures, writing it and putting it altogether.  I appreciate your patience since it took me a month to finish it.  In case you missed any of the chapters, you can click on each one for quick reference or you can go to the archives on the right column on the page.  

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Florida- Chapter 5: Fort Myers

The last chapter of my Florida series is Fort Myers.  We arrived there on Monday and stayed there until we left Friday morning.  Michael's parents live in Fort Myers for the winter.  It just so happens we were coming to stay with them just a day after they had gotten there themselves. We got to their house about an hour before sunset.  We decided to drive to the beach to see if we could make the sunset.  We got there just in time!  Unfortunately, something was wrong with my camera so I wasn't able to capture it.  We do have it on video though.   We ended up using Michael's mom's camera for the rest of the trip.  We ended up staying on the beach at Top 'O Mast for a drink and relaxing on the patio for an hour or so.  

The weather was finally warm!  The whole Florida trip up until we arrived in Fort Myers was chilly.  The temperature never went above 68 degrees and locals said the weather was more like January than November.  Add in some the winds and it feels even colder.  In Fort Myers, the temperature was around 80 and above.  It was great and even hot.

The one thing we love to do in Fort Myers is go the beach.  We've both been to plenty of beaches in Florida and Fort Myers is always our favorite.  The sand is the whitest, finest and softest.  Plus there's lot of fun bars/restaurants shops right on the beach.  We went to the beach the next day and laid out.  The water was still too cold to swim in but played around a little bit in the water.  Here are some of pictures from Fort Myers.  They are in no particular order from day to day as we kind of did the same thing each day. 

Times Square on Ft. Myers Beach

On the rooftop at Lani Kai

This parrot could talk and when it saw a dog, it started barking

Even if my head did fit, it still wouldn't be believable

My Jack Sparrow

We went to Manatee World after the beach one day.  It was late in the day so we didn't get to see much of the manatees.  When it's sunny, you can see into the water and see them but it was cloudy and dark so our views were limited.  This is a place you can see them but they are actually in the wild here. 

That's about all we saw of them.  They come up and get a breath of air and go back down

They swim through this area 12 miles each way, 2 times a day to get their food

This was part of the park that you could walk through.  There were alligators in there.

I love the Spanish Moss (it's actually a plant) on the trees in Florida.  It's not good for the trees though as it inhibits their ability to grow.  

Here's Captiva Beach.  We saw dolphins here that day.  There are huge waves and the water is turquoise.

Michael and I went out one night to downtown Ft. Myers for a drink.  We stopped at this cigar bar and I had a pineapple upside down cake martini.  The bartender delivered another one after this and Michael asked me how my "Fartini" was.  When the bartender delivered it, he tooted and it was totally in his breeze when we came and set it down for me.  We were so grossed out. So much so that I actually took it back and ordered a chocolate martini instead.  Excuse this picture of me.  My eyelids got burned on the beach earlier that day! 

Here are some puppies that live next Michael's parents house.  I think there was a total of 7 of them.

Here are some lemons from Michael's parents yard.  They have lemons, grapefruit, oranges and some other orange-type fruit growing in their yard.

Thanksgiving was the last full day we spent in Fort Myers.  We all went to the Golden Corral for dinner and then took a walk around the neighborhood afterwards.  From left to right: Michael's mom, Karen, Dad Ray, Michael, Aunt Carol, Joe, Uncle Joe and cousin Jason.  

Our flight left Fort Myers around noon on Friday.  Back to reality! 

Florida-Chapter 4: Jacksonville vs. Vikings

The day of the game was our last full day in Jacksonville.  We drove to the tailgating lots and immediately saw tons of purple.  For some reason, we were somewhat nervous about how the fans would be.  We have never had an issue with the home team's fans ever, except for Philly.  In fact, the Jacksonville fans were some of the best fans we've ever encountered.  They were more than friendly and nice to us.   One of my good friends from the past was also down in Jacksonville at the same time hanging out with a couple of people I was friends with back in the day and they were all going to the game too.  We never ended up seeing each the whole time we were down there.  I think that he'd rather be drunk with his friends than make the effort to see us.  Oh well, some things never change and some people seemed to have not grown up.  

Tailgating was fun.  The parking lots themselves were kinda weird, with not much people cooking, but just sitting there in chairs.  It was a very subdued, relaxed crowd.  Even with the Vikings fans that we met, hardly a one was actually from Minnesota.  We've increasingly seen more and more purple on the road and have come to realize that even though we have some very fair-weathered fans in Minnesota, there is a very loyal fan base around the country.  

The game started out great!  The Vikings defense scored right away on a fumble and shortly into the 1st quarter, the score was 14-0.  The stadium itself was really nothing special, especially after just being at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa the week before.  Even the name of Jacksonville's stadium is blah.....Jacksonville Municipal Stadium.  It used to be Alltel Stadium so I am not sure what happened to change that.  The fans and their loyalty to a team that is just mediocre was so reminiscent of the Vikings.  Their fans/team reminded us so much of the Vikings, to the point we felt sorry for them a little.   We just happened to have things go our way that day and came out with a win.  We have only seen 1 win on the road prior to this game and that was a preseason game in Seattle so it was nice to finally see a regular season win.  Thank you, Jacksonville fans.  Your hospitality was awesome!

Tailgating with the other Vikings fans

At the Entrance

Jacksonville Municipal Stadium

The Vikings entering onto the field

Look at all the purple!

Look at the scoreboard-4th Quarter, 4th and 4 with the ball on the 4.  

After the game, I went out to the beach in front of our hotel.  I took this picture of the hotel.  Michael is on our balcony.  He's on the top floor about in the middle in a white t-shirt.  See him?

We stayed and relaxed at the hotel for the rest of the night.  We left Jacksonville around 11 am Monday and headed south almost 6 hours back to the Gulf Coast to Fort Myers to spend the rest of our trip there.  

Florida-Chapter 3: Jacksonville

Thursday:

We took off from the Gulf Coast and headed to Jacksonville on the East Coast. The drive is about 3.5 hours. We were actually staying in Jacksonville Beach, which is about 15 miles or so from downtown. Our hotel was right on the beach. It was getting late when we arrived and we wanted to see the ocean before we checked in so here was our first view of the Atlantic for the trip:

We checked into our hotel shortly thereafter. My sister works for Marriott brand hotels and I am able to get the associate discount at certain hotels chains. I asked for an oceanside room if they had one available, which they did. I was going to surprise Michael with the room since he was waiting in the car. The only thing that we had to forgo was the king bed for 2 double beds. Who cares. I'd rather have oceanside. I gave the woman my authorization form from my sister's hotel and she asked me what I position I held at the hotel. I told her I didn't work there but my sister did. I went out to the car to get our luggage and Michael asked if I got oceanside. I told him I wasn't able to. He was bummed. When we got to our room and I opened the door, I said, "I lied". The room was awesome and the view was spectacular. We were on the top floor overlooking the Atlantic. Just a few minutes after being in the room, the front desk girl calls and said there is a problem. She says that I cannot get the room for the rate that I was quoted and that it was a mistake. She said she only gave me oceanside because she thought I was an employee. I went down to the front desk to straighten things out, only after panicking and calling my sister. She told me the property was wrong and that the rate was correct. They kept telling me that they would be losing money if they were able to give me the rate I was quoted. After much back and forth, someone else, possibly the general manager, resolved everything and told the asst. general manager and the front desk person I was correct and the rate was correct. I was very relieved but knew it was correct. Because of my sister and her awesome discount, we were able to spend 4 days oceanside for less than the price of 1 regular rate night. Here are some of the views from our room:

Our balcony

The pool from our balcony

The surfers

We were on Jacksonville Beach but we were just a block or two away from Neptune Beach. We went there and bummed around looking for places to eat. We saw this cat on the way.

We settled for Al's Pizza. Michael got this pizza and I thought it looked so good, even though I don't care for pepperoni or jalapenos.

Friday:

I didn't want to set the alarm but I wanted to see the sunrise so I trusted myself to get up and see it. I missed it by just a little. Still beautiful though!

We headed out to go south about 30 minutes to St. Augustine. St. Augustine is the oldest city in the nation, discovered in 1565. It is the place where Ponce de Leon stumbled upon and also the place of the supposed Fountain of Youth. We didn't go in but I did take a picture of the entrance.

We then went to the next place....the reason why we came to St. Augustine. The famous lighthouse. This lighthouse is haunted and has been featured on the TV show, Ghost Hunters.

We had to climb 218 stairs to get up there!

The top

It was extremely windy and cold!

See the lighthouse in the background?

Here is a fort that is in the city that has been there since the 1500's

I wish my eyes weren't closed in this picture!

This is a beach we went to around the St. Augustine area. You could drive your car on the beach. These were some of the craziest waves I've ever seen! We met a guy on this beach that used to live on the same street in MN as us! He lived there in the '60's and then moved to Florida. We actually met a lot of people from MN.

We started driving all around and we ended up taking our car for a ferry ride. The dude that worked on the ferry was a character. When we started to drive off the boat, he said out of nowhere while running his fingers across the bim of his hat, "Don't burn the turkey...DON'T BURN THE TURKEY!" What?!?! The only thing we could think of was for Thanksgiving which was still almost a week away. Here's our car on the ferry:

We drove to Amelia Island and then just kept on driving to Georgia. Once we got into Georgia, we turned around at the first exit and went back to Florida. I just wanted to say I've been there, more than just being in their airport. :)

We ended our night with a comedy show. We went and saw Michael Winslow. He is considered, "The Man of 10,000 sound effects". If his name doesn't ring a bell, does the sound effect guy from Policy Academy help? His show was so hilarious. I had tears streaming down my face from laughing so hard. We got to meet him after the show too.

Saturday:

We didn't do too much on Saturday. We went into downtown Jacksonville and explored a little. We went to Jacksonville Landing. It's a small mall with restaurants and bars in it. We ate at American Cafe. It was really good. I had canjun-style salmon. I ate a lot of fish on the trip!

We had to walk down some stairs and I couldn't even do it because my legs were so sore from the lighthouse the day before. Someone's out of shape!


Look at our cute star shaped mozzarella

The big Christmas tree getting decorated at Jacksonville Landing

The Friendship Fountain

The Jacksonville Skyline-Jacksonville Landing is at the water on bottom of the skyline

Here is a panoramic view of the city

We went to Atlantic Beach and here are some pictures of the beach. There were some great shells on this beach. Sorry about the shadows.



We went back to downtown Jacksonville in the evening and we really wanted to get some nice pictures of the skyline at night but none of the pictures turned out. We went to River City Brewing Co. for a beer and went back to the hotel to get ready for our next big event, the Vikings/Jacksonville game! Until then...